4 février 2019 | International, Aérospatial
COLOGNE, Germany ― Germany's Ministry of Defence has officially ruled out the F-35 joint strike fighter as a choice to replace its aging Tornado fleet, Defense News has learned.
An official from the ministry confirmed that the F-35 is not a finalist in the competition, which seeks a replacement for the 90-jet fleet. The news was first reported by German site AugenGeradeaus.
The move is not altogether surprising. Berlin for some time has officially favored an upgraded version of the fourth-generation Eurofighter Typhoon, built by a consortium of Airbus, Leonardo and BAE Systems, as the Tornado replacement. The main argument is to keep European companies involved in building combat aircraft and, perhaps even more importantly, staying clear of disturbing Franco-German momentum in armaments cooperation.
However, the decision leaves open the question of certification for nuclear weapons. The Typhoon is not certified to carry the American-made nuclear bombs that Germany, as part of its strategic posture, is supposed to be able to carry on its jets.
Competing against the Typhoon is Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
Before the German MoD confirmed that the F-35 was officially out of the running, Reuters on Thursday reported that the ministry was considering splitting the buy between the Typhoon and either the F-35 or Super Hornet.
Ordering both the Typhoon and an American aircraft would make it easier to continue carrying out the NATO nuclear mission, while also lending support to the European industrial base. However, it could complicate logistics, adding more expense and forcing the German air force to maintain two supply chains.
It is worth noting that despite complaints about the cost of keeping the ageing Tornados flying, keeping around a certain number of them always has been considered a painful, but not impossible, proposition among some defense experts. That is especially the case for the nuclear mission.
“There does not have to be a nuclear Tornado replacement,” Karl-Heinz Kamp, president of the Federal Academy for Security Policy, a government think tank, told Defense News last August. He noted that any German government is acutely averse to the publicity surrounding Berlin's would-be atomic bombers.
“That's why they will keep flying the Tornados, despite the price tag and despite having asked about a Eurofighter nuclear certification in Washington,” Kamp predicted at the time.
German defense officials on Thursday evening stressed that no decisions had been made besides reducing the playing field to the FA-18 and the Eurofighter Typhoon. The Defense Ministry will request additional information from the respective manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus, on the issues of operations, economic viability and timing, these officials said.
Germany's decision appears to have come at the surprise of F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which was not told by the ministry of the imminent announcement.
“We have not been officially notified of a decision on Germany's future fighter,” Lockheed spokesman Mike Friedman said in an emailed response to a query. “The F-35 delivers unmatched value as the most capable and lowest life-cycle cost aircraft, while delivering the strongest long-term industrial and economic opportunities compared to any fighter on the market. As the foundation of NATO's next generation of air power, the F-35 is the most advanced aircraft in the world today, and includes Electronic Attack capabilities well beyond any specialized fourth generation aircraft.”
Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report.
11 janvier 2024 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR
The system fuses a myriad of sensors into a lightweight Head Up Display that provides unprecedented situational awareness. Elbit America’s prototype evolves through three prototype development phases during a 72-month...
30 avril 2024 | International, Aérospatial
The service is divesting its entire turboprop-based ISR fleet, developed for counterinsurgency, in favor of a high-speed jet with high-tech sensors.
20 septembre 2018 | International, Naval, C4ISR
By: Amber Corrin The Navy released a long-awaited final request for proposals Sept. 18 for the re-compete of its Next Generation Enterprise Network contract. But it's part one of two, covering only the hardware side of things as the service looks to overhaul its Navy-Marine Corps Intranet. According to analysts at Deltek, each piece of the NGEN-R request is valued at roughly $250 million over a three-year period, per estimates from Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. That's significantly lower than NGEN's original $3.5 billion price tag. Specifically, the RFP seeks hardware devices for use on the Department of Defense's classified and unclassified networks, including desktops, laptops, two-in-one detachable devices, tablets, ultra-small desktop computers, as well as thin- or zero-client devices. A single device could serve multiple users and associated accounts, according to the RFP. But for the roughly 400,000 devices NGEN-R looks to replace, the service in particular is looking at an end-user hardware-as-a-service arrangement. “It's breaking out the services that are being provided in a way that allows us to gain most effective advantage of how industry does business today,” Capt. Don Harder, deputy program executive officer for Navy enterprise information systems, told Federal Times in a recent interview. “The end user of hardware and devices as its own separate contract, there are those suppliers out there that that's what they specialize in. By breaking that out into its own contractual component within the NGEN-R construct ... we believe will allow us to get more effective advantage to pricing on those components.” The language in the RFP solidifies Harder's thoughts as part of the statement of work. “In acquiring EUHWaaS, the Government is only acquiring the service of using an EUHW device. This is not a purchase, and titles for all EUHWaaS devices remain with the Contractor,” the RFP states. “EUHWaaS includes the provisioning, storage of spares, configuration, testing, integration, installation, operation, maintenance, [end-of-life] disposal of NIPRNet and SIPRNet EUHW, and internal storage device removal and destruction requirements.” Bids for the hardware piece of NGEN-R are due Nov. 19. The second part of the NGEN-R RFP, service management integration and transport or SMIT, is expected in the next 30 days, according to a Navy spokesman. SMIT will cover much of NMCI's backbone and functionality, including services ranging from help desk to productivity suites to network defense — and how they're technically provided. Splitting NGEN-R into two separate contracts was an intentional move designed, at least in part, to give the Navy greater flexibility in the capabilities available to users, and the options for buying them, as technology evolves. “We are modifying how the services are broken out in a way that it allows us to sever some of those services as new mechanisms [and] provide [them as they are] brought into play or brought to our attention,” Harder said, using cloud capabilities as an example. “We may allow a mechanism to pull some of those into either a hybrid cloud or a cloud solution in the future. If so, it may go on a separate contractual vehicle at which point in time we would sever those services away from the SMIT vehicle. So, we're looking at how we take those services and how we manage them contractually, which would allow us, again additional flexibility later on down the road.” Harder said that throughout the development of NGEN-R, he's been eyeing not just the Navy, but also the broader government to benefit from the new approach. “We're building in that flexibility that allows the government the ability in the future even to find components of services that can be done in a more effective or efficient way [and] either sever them or modify them separately as opposed to having to break apart the entire contract to do something,” he said. The hardware piece of NGEN-R was released less than two weeks after Navy officials announced a one-year, $787 million extension to the incumbent provider, Perspecta. Harder declined to put a dollar figure on the NGEN-R contract, as did other Navy officials. The RFP comes after several delays — officials previously had said the contract would be up for bidding this summer. According to Harder, prior to release the RFP had to be approved by leadership at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy office. Harder said the Navy has taken extra time to shore up “the education piece” — ensuring the contracting process meets leaders' expectations, particularly with the new strategy. And IT modernization also has come into play, with officials from the broader DoD looking to NGEN as a possible model or even contract vehicle for defense networks down the line, he said. “We need to ensure that what we have placed in the contract and how we're going about the contract meets leadership expectations. And because we are doing things in a different way, that's taking a little bit of time,” Harder said. The Navy's approach to running NMCI today is “one of the more cost-effective ways of managing networks. And there is a desire as part of one of the many IT reform efforts [for possible] integration of networks in the future to mimic or, potentially, even ride on our contracts.” https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2018/09/19/ngen-r-what-is-the-navy-thinking